Emma Bull (39 page)
Authors: Finder
If he abided by it.
I waited until he'd hurried off down the street, and Sunny was doing the hair, thread, and match trick with the back door lock. Then I said, "I can't believe you did that."
"Did what?" she asked, once the recitation was done and the match had gone out.
"You let the son of a bitch go. Why do you think he's going to do what he promised? What's going to keep him from running away, going to ground someplace, and starting work on the next batch?"
Sunny smiled up at me, the torchlight gleaming sharply off her teeth. "What, can't you find him again?"
I shut my mouth so hard it was lucky I didn't bite my tongue.
"Besides, I think he will keep his promise. You heard what he said about Faerie. I think his bridges are burned in a big way there. And if he's grateful for a little mercy, we might be able to get some help out of him."
"Testimony."
"That, too. I was thinking of the kids that are half-changed, and the virus. If he's actually the originator of the passport, he may know enough of his stuff to repair some of the damage."
She stood up, and the torchlight fell full on her face. She was tired, and angry, and nothing like any movie cop I'd ever seen. I was fascinated by the texture of the skin on her forehead, the tight lines of her lips. She met my stare and frowned.
"Vengeance is somebody else's," she said. "Don't ask me whose. But it's not in my job description, no matter how much you or I wish it was."
"That's not what I was thinking," I said.
Lightning was shuttling between clouds, where the sky showed between gaps in the buildings. "I need to take the bike back to the garage," I said, as she settled into the sidecar. "Do you want me to drop you at home?"
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"Are you staying
at Tick-Tick's apartment?"
"No, I'll walk back to my place."
"I'll stick with you, then, and walk you home."
I looked at the sky. "You'll get rained on."
Sunny shrugged. "Now that I've lost my wheels, I better get used to walking in the rain."
I pulled my helmet on, to avoid saying anything else, and to dodge her eyes. As we pulled away from the not-a-cooking-school, I thought about how it might work. If I had the nerve. I wouldn't have the nerve. Stopping on the sidewalk in front of my building, inviting her to come up for a beer—did I have any beer? Damn it, no, I didn't, and I couldn't invite her up for one and stop at Yoshi's on the way to bum some more beer. Well, tea. I could offer her tea. I wondered if the apartment was marginally clean.
I should have said I was staying at the Ticker's, where there was something in the icebox.
Someone sprang up off the stoop of the Ticker's building as we drew near in the street. I almost
recognized her. I stopped the bike and tugged off my helmet, and it came to me. Small, with a long brown braid—she was the one who knew history at the Daughters of Brede. The temperature around me seemed to have dropped ten degrees.
"Orient? You're Orient, right?"
I nodded. Sunny had her helmet off, too, and was watching me. I didn't look at her.
"Can you go to the care hostel right away?"
That was all she said. I could have asked why, but that would only have been stalling. Sunny pulled the helmet back on, and I put the bike in gear.
Paradise Lost
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At the door to room 24, I looked at the bed with Tick-Tick in it and had two thoughts at once: The Daughters were wrong—she was sleeping; and I was too lateùshe was dead. I was wrong on both
counts.
A Daughter I hadn't seen before was in the room. She wasn't bustling around, or measuring things, or taking a pulse. She was just sitting, keeping watch, keeping the Ticker company. Now she stood up and touched Tick-Tick on the shoulder, and said, "Your friend is here. Is there anything you want?"
The Ticker's eyes were closed, but she smiled. "Not now."
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The Daughter nodde
d as she passed me, and left the room.
I sat in the chair she'd vacated, which was in hand-holding distance. I didn't take advantage of that.
"How goes the quest?" the Ticker whispered.
"We're winning, I think. We found the source, anyway."
She opened her eyes a little, just enough to squint at me, and I remembered her complaining that the light hurt them. The light in the room was already low, but I leaned over and blew out the lamp nearest the bed. "Too late," she said, with a dry, windy chuckle. "I got a look at you. Was this source in a midden?"
I'd forgotten the state of my grooming. "It's sort of a long story. But we had to borrow your bike.
Sunny's car got blown up."
I regretted it the instant it was out of my mouth. Pain moved her features. She shook her head a little on the pillow. "A Triumph Spitfire. The dearest things—part of their value is that they cannot last." Then her eyes squinted open again, and she grinned. "Blessed Mab, what an awful thing to say at such a time."
I clenched my hands on the chair arms. "Sunny wouldn't mind."
"Sunny be damned. You know what I meant."
"Stop it."
She closed her eyes and frowned. "If you mean to be mealy-mouthed, go away and send the nurse back in. I did not wish for your company so that I could share in a lie."
"The middle of the night is always the worst time for sick people. You'll be pretty damned embarrassed about this in the morning."
"You are wasting time, and I at least have very little of it. Stop playing the fool."
The Daughters of Brede was hardly like a hospital at all: no bright, hard lights, no hushed terrors, no smell of pain and death, none of the things that Bolt Street Clinic couldn't help but remind me of. But pain and death could still enter here, and the people who had to sit helpless and watch them come felt just the same, wherever they did it.
"Orient?" she said. "I didn't mean to scold."
I took her hand. I'd known I would, eventually, and I'd known that when I did, it would be to
acknowledge the thing I didn't want to know, to let in the word I'd tried not to hear. I swallowed and said, "Never mind."
" 'All that has been mine is yours to keep, to guard, or give away.' " She drew an uneven breath. "There.
That's binding, you know."
"I know."
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"All
those tools you haven't the faintest notion how to use." She grinned again.
"And your apartment for mountain goats."
"And my curious furniture."
"I like your furniture."
Her grip tightened on my fingers. "I meant what I said, my dear. This is my home. These are my people.
You are more to me than any brother of my blood. I have no regrets."
I do
, I wanted to cry out,
I have enough for both of us. Don't leave me
. "I'll remember," I said.
"It's well," Tick-Tick announced. "I am satisfied."
Sunny was prying my hand away, gently, one finger at a time. It prickled as the circulation came back.
The room was colder than it had been when I'd come in, and a little brighter, too. Sunny had turned the wick up on the remaining lamp. "Stand up," she said, and I realized I'd been sitting for a very long time.
She half-lifted me out of the chair. "Come on," she ordered, and I followed where she pulled me. After a little walking she made me sit down again, and put something in my hands and told me to drink it.
Coffee—very good coffee. Cops always know where to find it when the rest of the town is short. There were no beds in this room, only chairs and a couch and a square table with folding chairs pulled up to it.
There were scattered playing cards on the table, and two coffee cups. It looked like a nurses' break room, and looked, too, as if Sunny might have chased a few of them out of it.
A seedybox was playing softly in the corner, "Bonnie Barbry-O" by… what was the name of that band?
Bards of a Feather. Clever name. I carried
my
coffee cup
over
to the window. Such a good version, pretty and mournful, and that low bass harmony on the refrain like something out of a South African men's chorus, singing, "Bid a fond farewell—"
It was raining. What a melodramatic piece of work. It wasn't any better than Tick-Tick's comment on the passing of precious things—
Oh, hell, out of coffee—
"You should try to stop crying. You'll dehydrate," Sunny said from somewhere behind me.
"I'm not crying."
"Oh," she said.
She took the coffee cup out of my hands and replaced it with a full one. Then she managed to catch it again before I dropped it. God forbid, I thought, gripping a fistful of the window drapes in each hand, God forbid that we should waste precious things.